


Speed Multiplied By Time

by ice_hot_13



Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2020-09-06 21:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: Pete returns to teach at Top Gun ten years after graduating; everything is the same.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so i rewatched top gun, and here we are. also, i learned that my health care plan covers prescription aviators, so i definitely made that bad decision while watching.   
here because i just finished my ten year old top gun fic the other day and was so excited to find people still reading!!!! so hi again!!!

When Pete returned, everything was different.

Somehow, within the unchanging sea that was Top Gun, something was different. Every room felt the same: the almost-rickety desks, the flattened carpet, the beige paint. The smell was the same, the mix of disinfectant, sweat, and engine oil. The quiet had the same stillness, a calm sea with opaque water. Even the top of Viper’s desk was unchanged; Pete stood before the same desk, feet in the same spot they’d been a decade ago, and stared at the small globe on its stand that sat on the corner of the tabletop. It was entirely golden, and even from his short distance away, he couldn’t tell if the countries were even visible. Just like he had ten years ago, he wondered what the point of it was, a globe that wasn’t a map.

“Maverick,” Viper’s voice was not as harsh as it had been before, as if loudness was blocked by the stripes that had joined Pete’s uniform, buoying him closer to his superior in rank. They were closer to peers, now; Pete wasn’t here for five weeks, to be taken and taught and turned out.

“Sir,” Pete tore his gaze from the globe. “I’m honored to be here. I’d always planned to return to Top Gun.” Viper barked a laugh. Maybe Pete hadn’t been funny before, or maybe only now was Viper allowed to find him funny.

“I’m glad you decided that, Commander. Must have been psychic, since it seemed to have come before your actual invitation.”

“I’ve been called an intuitive pilot, sir. I think it carries over.”

“Maverick, I think I’m going to appreciate you much more as an instructor than I ever did as a student.” Viper rose to his feet, shook Pete’s hand firmly.

“Sir, I think I’ll enjoy being an instructor more than a student,” Pete said, and Viper laughed again. “If I may,” Pete added, because why the hell not, “I’ve always wondered something.”

“What’s that?” Viper sat back in his desk chair, steepled his fingers.

“What’s the point of the globe, sir?” Pete pointed to the gold sphere, “I mean, it doesn’t even have anything on it. It’s basically a ball.”

“If you were a good enough pilot, you’d be able to navigate it anyways,” Viper said, which didn’t really answer Pete’s question.

After his meeting with Viper, Pete was free to roam the school, presumably to refamiliarize himself. He found himself ignoring the areas he’d frequented, preferring to poke into rooms he hadn’t been permitted in, opening any door marked _private _and _no students _and finding only break rooms and offices there. He didn’t recognize most of the names on the plaques outside the offices as he strolled partway down the hallway, although he did recognize the offices. Several, he’d stood in and stared ahead while someone shouted at him.

“Maverick!” he heard, and when he turned, he could have been twenty-three again. Charlie, like she’d walked straight out of his memories, like he was just about to reach to kiss her, or to walk away from her for the last time. She was standing in the doorway of an office further down the hall, arms crossed over her chest; it had been ten years, but for Charlie, it had hardly been a day. Not that she didn’t look older, different; her hair was straighter, darker blond, tiny lines by her eyes had appeared, but when she smiled at him, she had been recently serenaded in a bar and serenely rejected a young pilot.

“I thought you went to DC.” Not what he’d intended to say, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “I mean, I’m happy to see you!”

“But what am I doing here,” she laughed, leaned against the doorframe, one ankle crossed over the other. “I came back, same as you. I always enjoyed teaching, and there’s always a new bunch of kids to teach how to fly.”

“It’s nice to see you.” Despite the breakup, despite never having found the words for _you are the love of someone else’s life _and settling for _it’s not you, it’s me. _He’d been so _young. _How had he made it through here, through anything, when he was that young?

“It’s weird being back, isn’t it?” she straightened, walked towards him and then right past him, “come on, we’re getting a drink, if you promise not to sing anything.”

“I won’t make promises I can’t keep,” Pete said, and then he was following her like it was natural again. Her perfume was different; how was it possible that he remembered her perfume enough to realize it had changed? Coming back was somehow a mix of putting himself back into the place he’d been ten years ago, and finding himself somewhere entirely new. “So how’ve you been?” he asked, following alongside her, on the familiar path to the Officer’s Club. “Any, uh… kids?”

“Only if you count degrees as children,” Charlie shook her head, “which, I do, they were certainly enough work. What about you? Wife? Kids?”

“Nope.” He didn’t even have the same motorcycle anymore; he was incapable of holding on to things, it seemed. “America is my wife.”

“Oh my God, how have you gotten _worse _over the years?”

It was nice, catching up with Charlie. Pete didn’t have much to offer in the way of life updates – he’d spent the past ten years in the air, and everything on the ground felt faraway, nothing his. It was easy to drift, when his feet never seemed to touch the ground anymore.

“You aren’t the only one who’s come back, you know,” Charlie said mildly, when they were watching the sun set through the bay window, the tarmac like a still ocean.

“No shit?” 

“Hollywood comes in for some specialty lectures. I don’t want to say he was secretly the smartest one of the bunch, but he does a lot with the Adversary Training course. He has a master’s.”

_ “Hollywood?” _Pete nearly choked on his drink. “What’s next? Did Slider get a PhD and become an astronaut? Has Wolf started teaching preschool? Is Merlin a dog trainer?”

“Wolf flew for a while, but he’s out now. I see him around, and he did Helmets To Hard Hats, not helmets to preschool teacher.” Charlie sipped her drink slowly. “As far as I know, Slider is not on the moon, and Merlin doesn’t train dogs. Well, he might, I don’t know what he does with his spare time, but I doubt active duty leaves much time for dogs.”

“You never know. Fire stations have Dalmatians, right? Maybe military bases have, like…” Pete blew out a breath, squinting at the view beyond the window. “Poodles.”

“Why on earth is your first guess _poodles?” _Even ten years apart couldn’t change the way her eyes lit up when she laughed at him.

“I don’t know, they seem very, like…” Pete tilted his chin up, nose in the air, to demonstrate. “Official.”

“Why wouldn’t you say German shepherd or something?”

“I assume the police officers have every employable German shepherd.”

“Which leaves us… poodles.”

“Like I said, they have very official stature.”

“I have a basset hound,” Charlie said, which was somehow the most surprising thing Pete had heard all day, and his surprise must have registered on his face. “What? I wanted a dog. Theodosia is a great dog.”

And somehow, Pete found himself talking to Charlie until the bar closed, walking her to her car while still talking about her dog with the ridiculous name. It could have been a day a decade ago, except that at the end of the walk, Pete kissed Charlie’s cheek, closed the car door for her, and left alone. Things felt different, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why, despite the tiny differences around him: going home alone, his newly rented townhouse, no motorcycle keys in his pocket. None of that was quite it.

\--

Pete walked into the new student orientation, and practically stumbled from the wave of shock that overcame him. He beelined for Charlie, standing at the back of the room, ignoring the new group of young pilots that was filing in.

“You didn’t think to mention that _he’s _here?” he whispered, pointing and then, thinking better of it, whipped his pointing finger back out of the air. He glanced over his shoulder to see if he’d been spotted, didn’t seem to have been.

“Who?” Charlie was busy sifting through papers in a folder, which looked unrelated to the student orientation. “I never used to go to these things, but I’ve grown to like them. Knowing I’m an instructor deters them from hitting on me, although you can’t discourage the really ballsy ones.”

“Who?” Pete repeated, “_Ice, _you didn’t mention that _Ice _was here.”

“Didn’t I?” Charlie pursed her lips. “No, we started talking about poodles.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Well, as you may remember,” Charlie swept a hand towards the plaque on the wall behind her. She had apparently grown a flair for the dramatic. “He has a guaranteed teaching position here, which he took up two years ago.”

“You could have mentioned that,” Pete grumbled. Maybe it was being back here, instead of an aircraft carrier so far from land it was like none existed, but everything felt so much more serious on land. Maybe if Pete had known Ice would be here, he wouldn’t have come. They’d left Top Gun on good terms, he wanted to tell Charlie, to tell _Ice, _but what good would that do. “Can I still turn down the position?”

“The one you currently have? Little late.” She watched Pete step into place beside her, slide on his sunglasses. “If I was smart, I’d have gotten stock in Ray Ban.”

“Not a good move, it’s down fifty on Nasdaq and falling.”

“You understand that sentence doesn’t make any sense, right?” Charlie arched an eyebrow. Pete quirked a smile. It faded, as he looked towards the front of the room. Had Ice even seen him? Possibly not. He was standing at the front with a few other instructors, sunglasses on, posture straight.

Even from this distance – although Pete did, admittedly, have prescription lenses in his aviators, so that was the only reason he could tell from across the room – Ice looked different. Leaner, although it was only now that Pete realized he’d had such a baby face before, now that Ice had cheekbones like that. He couldn’t possibly be taller, no matter how it seemed that way, but his shoulders seemed broader. He’d changed his hair, thankfully, because highlights hadn’t been acceptable even back then, and the undercut suited him more than whatever he called what he’d been doing before. The sunglasses looked exactly the same.

“What does it matter, anyways?” Charlie whispered. The orientation had begun, but Pete still couldn’t tell if Ice had noticed him. Maybe he’d been informed of Pete’s return already. It hadn’t made him quit his job and leave, but it hadn’t brought Ice looking for him, either.

“It doesn’t.” He hadn’t kept up with Ice’s career after they’d parted ways, but his uniform filled Pete in with some of the story.

“Shall I bring you over to say hi?” Charlie drawled.

“Were you this funny when we dated?” Pete retorted, then hesitated, but Charlie took it in stride, the corner of her mouth turning up even as she stared straight ahead.

“Maybe you weren’t mature enough to appreciate my wit.”

Pete spent the orientation thinking about what he should do. He considered several approaches: walking right up to Ice and making his presence known, deliberately avoiding crossing paths, and even, as his thoughts drifted years back, leaving entirely. He’d settled on frosty distance, which would have worked just fine if Ice didn’t intercept him and Charlie as they left the orientation room.

“I heard you were coming to teach,” Ice said; he sounded more like he used to over the radios than in school, somehow. He’d been what, twenty-two? He didn’t sound young at the time, but just like everything else, it was the juxtaposition making Pete realizes all the differences. “Congratulations on the offer.”

“Yeah, believe it or not, they do let guys who weren’t Top Gun teach here,” Pete wanted to be exasperated, but he was snappy, cared too much. “See you around, Ice.” He brushed past, and once he was down the hallway, heard the click of Charlie’s heels coming behind him.

“What was all that?” she asked, following him like she knew where they were going, even though Pete himself didn’t. “You guys were friends, last I’d heard.”

“Did you? Hear that, I mean?” Pete stopped; he hadn’t really reached anywhere. Honestly, he should be heading to the main classroom. He was supposed to watch the first lecture, before joining in the second one. Charlie looked at him for a moment, then seemed to realize he wasn’t being rhetorical.

“Yes, I’d heard that.”

“When?”

“_When? _I don’t know, Mav, it was ten years ago. Does the time really matter?” she asked, and Pete shrugged, although it felt like it did.

“I should get to class,” he said flatly, and Charlie didn’t have to tell him that he sounded like his twenty-three-year-old self again, petulant and wronged.


	2. Chapter 2

Pete couldn’t say he was enjoying teaching alongside Ice. He was loath to admit it, but the students’ reactions to them wasn’t making the experience any more bearable. Sure, they came to Pete with stories of their most daring maneuvers, but they also snickered when he told them to shut up and listen to the lecture. They listened to Ice, but that didn’t surprise Pete; of course Ice was the more effective disciplinarian, he was cold and sharp and unfriendly.

What surprised Pete, what _irritated _him, was that the students admired Ice a lot more. Compliments – or even mildly approving remarks, which was generally the best they got – from Ice made them preen, and criticisms made them hang their heads like they were ashamed of themselves. Pete got arguments, got _you don’t understand _and _it wasn’t like that _and _I knew what I was doing_, and Ice got silent nods of agreement.

“It doesn’t _matter _if they like you,” Charlie said, when Pete tried fruitlessly to describe it to her.

“No, it’s not that they _like _him,” Pete argued, slapping papers around on his desk, making more of a mess than before, “it’s that they give a shit when he says something. If I tell them they flew like shit, they argue with me! If _Ice _tells them, they look all – all repentant and shit!” Pete flung the last folder at the trash can without entirely meaning to. Charlie sighed; when Pete looked at her, he narrowed his eyes. “Have you been texting this whole time?”

“Yes,” she said, her thumbs still moving, “sorry your pity party wasn’t more interesting. You’re upset they don’t _repent _in front of you?”

“I’m not saying Ice is – look, do I have to be a dick to get them to respect me? Haven’t I earned that by being a good goddamn pilot?”

“Naval aviator, actually.”

“You are _not _funny.” Pete rolled his desk chair over to the trash, rescued the file he’d flung at it. It was a set of diagrams and plans he would need for his next class. The now-crumpled papers didn’t exactly make him look like a professional, but it wasn’t like his students saw him as one anyways, apparently. “We start the hops today, anyways. My flying was always better than his.”

“His was more methodical,” Charlie commented. “Very textbook, which is good, because that makes it repeatable. Repeatability is important, which I never did manage to hammer into your brain. Having a unique strategy for every situation means you have to spend more time formulating a plan and as I believe you’ve said before, there’s no time to think when you’re up there.”

“I’m flattered you can still quote me,” Pete said dryly. “Who the hell are you texting so much, anyways?”

“My dog walker,” Charlie set the phone down on the desktop. “Theodosia has a new friend down the street, and she’s setting up a playdate for me.”

“You lead the strangest life.” Pete pushed his chair back, stood. “I have a plane to fly.”

“Uh-huh.” Charlie didn’t move, and picked up her phone again.

“Are you going to leave my office?”

“I’m busy. Enjoy your flight. We know you have many choices when you fly, and thank you for choosing Top Gun Airlines.” She swept a hand towards the door as if to show him the way out. Pete really had no choice but to do as she indicated, and headed for the hanger.

His mood didn’t improve when the first person he ran into was Ice, while already running behind schedule. “You aren’t even ready,” Pete said, striding past Ice towards the tarmac. Ice chose to follow, despite clearly not being ready to fly. No flight suit, no helmet, just the ever-present sunglasses and uniform.

“Are _you _ready?” Ice asked, keeping pace with Pete easily, “Hollywood is going up first, and then you can follow.”

“Of course I’m ready,” Pete spotted his RIO already at their plane, couldn’t yet spot the callsign on his helmet. “I know the plan, Ice, I helped make it.”

“Just checking.” Ice stopped a few steps before Pete did, and just stood there during the pre-flight checks, watching them.

“Worried I forgot how to find the cockpit?” Pete called over, “I’ve found the _dick, _alright. Do you need something from me?”

“Just get in the sky, Maverick,” Ice’s voice was flat, same as usual lately, “it’s the big blue thing up there.”

He strode away towards the hanger; Pete rolled his eyes, yanked on his helmet so hard, he caught his ear with it. His RIO paused in his own work, leaned around the plane to see if Ice had left. His helmet read Landshark, of all goddamn things. “You and Commander Kazansky have a history?” he asked, voice laden with concern entirely unfitting a landshark, whatever the _hell_ that was.

“Everyone’s got a history,” Pete said, yanked himself into the cockpit, ran his fingers over everything within reach, felt like greeting every switch and dial personally. “He ever deign to fly with us, or what?”

“I only got here this year,” Landshark said, shrugging as he looked up at Pete from the ground, the sun reflecting in Pete’s eyes enough that he couldn’t even make out Landshark’s face.

And – for a moment, Pete was _lost. _He’d been here, _right here_, with Goose. On a day ten years ago, he’d taken off from this very place, and failed to keep Goose safe. Pete had left from _this spot, _and come back without Goose. Pete had walked out here without remembering, and found himself suddenly – _here _again, like time hadn’t passed, like the distance he’d gone from this spot didn’t matter because he’d returned to it.

“Something wrong?” Landshark asked.

“No, uh. Sorry. Last time I flew out of here –” Pete shook his head. It wasn’t even the _last _time, just the last one that he could remember with any clarity. Everything after that was a messy blur, an outline filled in with panic and fear. “Nothing, man. Get in the plane.”

“That does not fill me with confidence,” Landshark muttered, climbing in behind Pete. Pete’s sigh was lost in the roar of the engine.

Ice didn’t join them for any of the practice rounds that afternoon. Pete kept expecting him to, but it was just him and Hollywood. Flying alongside Hollywood was strange, mostly because his responses felt incomplete without Wolfman’s accompanying drawl, but Pete enjoyed catching the students off-guard, disappearing into the sun and swooping around unseen.

“Not bad!” he yelled to Hollywood once they’d landed; he wondered briefly if Hollywood missed the way Wolf used to howl over the radio after a successful hop, or even a barely-successful one. He introduced himself to Hollywood’s new RIO, Scarecrow, who didn’t seem to get why Pete asked if he’d seen Batman recently.

“Is that… a pilot?” Scarecrow asked, sounding completely befuddled, and Hollywood spluttered a laugh he tried to hide.

“Don’t listen to Maverick, Crow. Like, as a rule.”

Scarecrow hurried to join Landshark on his way back to the hanger, and Pete fell into step beside Hollywood, leisurely following the RIO’s. “Must be weird without Wolf, right?” Pete asked, and Hollywood shrugged.

“Crow’s a good dude,” he said, sounding surprisingly unbothered. Then again, Pete didn’t really know what it was like, to no longer fly with a RIO for entirely unpainful reasons. Wolf wasn’t dead. Apparently, he even lived nearby. Maybe Hollywood and Wolf had drifted apart anyways, and none of it really mattered. “Landshark’s good, isn’t he?”

“Stupidest name I’ve ever heard, but yeah, he’s fine.”

“At a certain point, all the good names are taken already.”

“That what happened to you?”

“_Hilarious. _Nice to see you haven’t changed,” Hollywood said, but he smacked Pete in the arm when he said it, grinning. “It is good to see you, you’ll definitely whip these kids into – well, if not textbook pilots, at least creative ones.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Pete said, surprised by how much he meant it. They weren’t particularly close during their time as students, but the familiarity was comforting, the kind of feeling he didn’t get from seeing Ice. “We should hang out! Get a drink or whatever, just not the O Club, can you believe I’m already sick of that place? My place is basically a collection of empty rooms, do you live near here?” He needed to slow down, because Hollywood was shaking his head.

“O Club it is. It’ll have to be later though, I have a lot of work to catch up on.” It was an acceptance, technically, but it somehow stung. Pete knew he was hypersensitive to disapproval; it came so often and so readily, he could normally see it coming a mile away. This felt more like hitting a brick wall when he’d expected a welcoming open door.

“Cool, man.” Pete straightened his shoulders, didn’t remember letting them slump. 

He spent the afternoon in the lecture hall, taking the students through reviews of their first hop. These days, they actually had video to refer to, could show the students their exact maneuvers and where they’d gone wrong. All the same mistakes, just new ways to watch them. Through some unspoken agreement, both Hollywood and Ice remained at the back of the classroom, while Pete spearheaded the deconstructions.

“What happened here?” Pete stopped the video again; pointing at the screen. It showed Big Country, who was supposed to have taken the lead, trailing after his wingman Jive in a disjointed swap of positions.

“He wasn’t _doing _anything,” Jive protested, pointing emphatically with a pen. Two rows over, Big Country heaved a sigh.

“I wasn’t _not _doing anything, either. I was thinking! You didn’t have to jump in!”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Jive retorted, “you weren’t _doing anything.” _

“That’s not a sign you should decide to do something!” It was devolving into an argument, and Pete cut a glance towards the back corner; Hollywood was openly grinning in amusement, and Ice was expressionless.

“Guys,” Pete interrupted, “the point isn’t that he was doing nothing–”

“See, it was _nothing,” _Jive said, pointing towards Pete like he was the proof, “not _thinking, _not _formulating, _or whatever the hell–”

“The problem,” came a voice from the back, that instantly quieted the class, and Pete sighed, watched Ice come up the aisle towards him. “Is not what Big Country was doing. The problem is what he _isn’t _doing. What he failed to do was communicate effectively, and _you _failed as well,” he stopped in front of Jive’s desk, and the loudmouthed pilot, who had no problems talking over Pete, was immediately silent. “You are a wingman. _Your job_ is to answer to your shared goal, because that is what you revert to whenever you do not have direct orders. _Your goal _was to give support to Big Country, _not _to go on the attack alone. By changing your goal, you compromised your entire team. It won’t always be the two of you up there, you’ll be within a greater team, and as soon as you go off-book, you endanger _everyone.” _

Kind of odd, Pete thought, that Ice was hammering this into Jive when Big Country seemed more at fault, in Pete’s opinion. Not that anyone seemed to care to hear what that was. All the students were staring at Ice like God himself had come down and told them their flying was pitiful.

“You have a great potential for danger, because by being the wingman, everyone is expecting you to follow the pilot’s lead. They’re watching the pilot for new changes, they are _not _watching you,” Ice’s voice, while loud enough to carry, was flat and sharp; it seemed the closest he would ever get to losing it on a student. Was it because the word _wingman _made him think of Pete? Probably not, and anyways, Pete was the one who had a right to be angry, not Ice.

“You were _unpredictable _to your lead,” Ice said the word like it was a curse, and it jarred loose another sound in Pete’s memory. They’d called Ice unpredictable, once, one single time.

“And to continue on that,” Pete jumped in, before Ice could tear Jive apart with his bare hands, which suddenly seemed like a possibility, “Big Country needed to take the forefront with leading. Communicate everything, even the fact that you’re still coming up with the plan. You guys need to put your entire stream of consciousness on the radio right now, to hone your communication skills.” He watched Ice retreat towards Pete’s desk in the front corner, stand there with his shoulders straight. “Anyways, let’s move on to our next pair?” Big Country seemed to relax at that, but Jive still looked like he’d been rattled. Probably something to do with his idol pilot – a fair guess, since Ice was apparently _everyone’s _idol here – barely stopping short of telling him he was a liability.

Pete had to approach Ice to get to his laptop on the desk, and he clicked to the next video, watched Ice while it played. Ice didn’t look at him, just stood with his arms crossed, jaw tight, so closed off that Pete would have thought he’d look like his younger self, for all the time Ice had spent emotionally shut tight. Pete had to tamp down the nonsensical urge to say _it wasn’t your fault, _something he wouldn’t mean and could not say. He could no more lift that particular albatross from Ice’s neck than forgive him.


End file.
